netstormfandomcom-20200213-history
$View
I Wanna Better View: battle1.jpg Did you ever make a scenario that started, but didn't display exactly where you wanted it to? Or say you had a Map, where an ally starts off in trouble. Wouldn't it be nice to zoom to that location at the start, so the player knows what kind of trouble the ally is in? Didn't know how to do these things? Well after this topic, you'll be able to zoom anywhere on the Netstorm battle map with ease. Manipulating the screen is easy, thx to Netstorm programmers. They created a group of commands that allows the MapMaker exact control over what area you want the player to view. Currently, there are 3 View keywords: ViewPriest, ViewHome, and ViewSpot. Each command, of course, has slightly different syntax. Lets start with the easiest command, ViewHome. Where's my Home? The $ViewHome routine does just like it sounds - it centers the window around your HOME Temple. Just add the following line whenever you want the screen to move to your Temple: <$ViewHome> Note, that the above syntax implies that you're using this command by itself, after the OptionsA. instructions. You could also use the keyword with an event (such as $Menu, $Button, $Timeout, etc.), but the syntax is different. Say you want a player to be able to view his Temple from a Menu. Then you'd do this: $Menu=View My Temple Now!,ViewHome,0 Piece of cake, right? Now onto the next View: Found my Home, but Where's my Priest? The <$ViewPriest, n> instruction allows you to center the map onto any Priest. The n is a number from 1-7, with 1 being the human player's Priest, and 2-7 being the AI's. So, say you want the player to view the location of enemy ai2. You'd use: <$ViewPriest, 2> Or, with a menu, you can set it up to allow the player to view their Priest, or the enemy's: $Menu=Find me!,ViewPriest,1 $Menu=Find the Enemy!,ViewPriest,2 Found my Home, and my Priest. But Where's the Action? The last View is the ViewSpot. The syntax is <$ViewSpot,(XxY)>. This will center the screen at the exact X and Y locations that you choose. Hey, wait a minute those X's and Y's remind me of school and UGH math. Is this algebra, or is this Netstorm Editing? Here's the skinny. The netstorm battlefield is big - much bigger than you can see all at once. So the Gods (the Netstorm Programming team) created a world that's 256 spaces wide by 256 spaces high. At any one time, the player only sees about 35 spaces square. The very top left corner of the screen is at location x=0 and y=0, while the very bottom right of the battlefield is x=255 and y=255. Enough Babbling! Where's the Example? Ok. Well. Say you have a map, and you have an ally who's close to the top center of the screen (x=127, y=60). A few seconds after the Map starts, you want a message to pop up, saying that your ally's in trouble. You also want the screen to move to the ally's location, so the player can see what trouble the ally is in. Here's a way you could do it: Options A. You and an ally have been ambushed! It's up to you to save the day. $Button=OK,DoNothing,0 @2 <$ViewSpot,(127x60)> An urgent message from your ally: "Please come quickly! We need your help!" <$MoveDialog,ml> $Timeout=10,DoNothing,0 See the highlighted ViewSpot command? Watch the syntax. You need the comma and the small x in between the 2 numbers. Also note the $MoveDialog instruction. After moving the screen, you may want to re-position the dialog box so that it doesn't come up in the center of the screen and block the player's view. In this case, the text box was moved to the left of the screen. One last thing... How do you find the exact x and y coordinates that you want to use. Well.... there's 2 ways, and both of them aren't very fun. The first and probably the easiest way is through trial and error. This can actually be done fairly quickly, since you know the center of the screen is . Just lower or raise the first number if you want left or right of center. Lowering the second number raises the view closer to the top of the battle area, while increasing the second number lowers the vew towards the bottom. The second way is with the Debug Hotkey . But if you use the second way, it's very time consuming, since you'll be looking at a very big text file (squids.txt) with a whole lot of numbers. Well, that wraps up this lesson. Now you can choose the best view for your Campaigns.... Special thx, again to jrc for finding lots of extra stuff on the view commands. category:NEC